racteristic. Thus, a singular judgment, in which the subject of
discourse is a single object, involves obviously the special idea of
oneness, or unity. A particular judgment, relating to several objects,
implies the idea of plurality, and discriminates between the several
objects. Now, the whole list of these ideas will constitute the complete
classification of the fundamental conceptions of the understanding,
regarded as the faculty which judges, and these may be called
categories.

1. Of Quantity: Unity, plurality, totality.

2. Of Quality: Reality, negation, limitation.

3. Of Relation: Substance and accident, cause and effect, action and
reaction.

4. Of Modality: Possibility--impossibility, existence--non-existence,
necessity--contingence.

These, then, are the fundamental, primary, or native conceptions of the
understanding, which flow from, or constitute the mechanism of, its
nature; are inseparable from its activity; and are hence, for human
thought, universal and necessary, or _a priori_. These categories are
"pure" conceptions of the understanding, inasmuch as they are
independent of all that is contingent in sense.

TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC

A distinction is usually made between what is immediately known and what
is only inferred. It is immediately known that in a figure bounded by
three straight lines there are three angles, but that these angles
together are equal to two right angles is only inferred. In every
syllogism is first a fundamental proposition; secondly, another deduced
from it; and, thirdly, the consequence.

In the use of pure reason its concepts, or transcendental ideas, aim at
unity of all conditions of thought. So all transcendental ideas may be
arranged in three classes; the first containing the unity of the
thinking subject; the second, the unity of the conditions of phenomena
observed; the third, the unity of the objective conditions of thought.

This classification becomes clear if we note that the thinking subject
is the object-matter of psychology; while the system of all phenomena
(the world) is the object-matter of cosmology; and the Being of all
Beings (God) is the object-matter of theology.

Hence we perceive that pure reason supplies three transcendental ideas,
namely, the idea of a transcendental science of the soul (_psychologia
rationalis_); of a transcendental science of the world (_cosmologia
rationalis_); and, lastly, of a transcendental science of God
(_theol